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Jon wakes up naked.
Brine is thick on his tongue, sticking to the back of his teeth, lining his throat. Cloying, baking the inside of his mouth the way meat is cured, scrubbed and buried in salt, hung up to dry. He attempts to work up saliva, tongue outlining cracked lips. It stings. Splits and scores pit the tender flesh. He might as well have taken sandpaper to his lips for all the good licking them does.
He tests the solidity of his limbs. There’s something strange about straightening his leg, the tug and pull of musculature too tightly wound around bone. An ache with no origin permeates his body, radiating in soft pulses at the joints like rainwater collecting on the ground before it sediments. It hurts to extend an arm, to let his head loll to the side on the pillow.
When Jon’s hand ghosts his sternum, he starts: his fingertips are deathly cold, as if carved from ice. They drag across his skin with a brittle harshness as he explores the slant of his collarbones, the round of his shoulders. Then his face, learning the shape of his jaw, ears, prodding tentatively at his swollen mouth, keeping a mental tally of what isn’t quite right.
Although since he doesn’t remember what is supposed to be right, he’s not sure what the purpose of the exercise is. Other than learning how real he is, how much to trust the authenticity of the bedsheets, the solidity of the mattress cradling him. Of the discomfort coalescing at his hip, pressure winding into a shivery tension as he examines how far his foot can extend.
Far. Unexpectedly far. The ball of his foot meets the base of the bed frame. It’s rigid and he can press as much as he wants, the wood won’t give. And if it is solid, then that must mean he is too.
Stark relief eases the clamp on his lungs. Jon doesn’t understand why that affects him so, but it does. I’m here.
Wherever “here” was. With confirmation of corporeality comes unease of the unknown. Jon closes his eyes and hears the far-off roar of the ocean.
Time passes. But time is meant to do that, he’s fairly confident. Though he can’t speak from experience that it does.
Memories drift by unanchored, deprived of context. They crumble when Jon reaches for them, leaving him to decipher dust. There are names and concepts that he could learn that could be useful, but the more desperate his attempts are, the faster they slip from his grasp.
Patience. Indecision. Atrophy. This Jon is familiar with. That’s why the pain is such a marvel. It sluices in his veins, feeds into his heart, the ventricles clenching. The dread and joy melds into a dizzying chorus: I’maliveI’maliveI’malive.
Then, soberingly: Why am I alive?
Cogito, ergo sum. If he’s alive, then Jon must concern himself about where he is, why he’s here, how he arrived here. Curiosity stirs even as half of him would prefer to embrace ignorance, sensing danger lies beyond the immediacy of his surroundings. That curiosity beckons him to open Pandora’s box, to turn it over and shake loose its contents until he has all of it back. That name that his lips fail to shape, vocal cords trembling. A way to reach that place where he’s meant to be. Someplace dark and musty but comforting.
Until it wasn’t?
A flash in the mist shrouding his mind. Jon’s brow furrows. The knowledge is there, the key to unlocking the box, furtively out of his reach.
The click of the door opening jars his focus. He opens his eyes.
“Hello, Jon.” There’s a man standing by the bed. A stranger. But one that Jon knows. Or knew.
Irritation flashes, born from frustration. Do I know him or not?
“I’m afraid your memories aren’t what they used to be,” the man says, and he’s holding a glass of water. Jon stares at it, hypnotized, wanting. If he cast up his accounts, would it be nothing but salt, coarse and wet with bile?
Jon is willing to risk it.
The man leans over Jon, supporting the nape of his neck so that Jon can drink from the offered glass. It’s a well-meaning gesture but the shock of someone’s body heat and his own greed to quench his thirst lead to Jon coughing as he drinks too fast. He’s left scowling in disgust at his own feebleness. Is that it? Is he incapable of even drinking? Might as well leave him to die if he’s that pitiful.
The man tuts. “Always so harsh on yourself. Come. We’ll do it this way.”
Jon grasps what that means when the stranger takes a sip, meeting his gaze. No. Absolutely not.
Except. He’s thirsty. It’s not a physical weakness that allows the man to cup Jon’s jaw and press their lips together, it’s that Jon lets him.
Their mouths are a perfect fit, he recognizes distantly, and that disturbs him. Is this the first time they’re—(kissing?)—but figuring out the answer proves less important than the sweetness of water sliding down his throat. It’s not enough. Jon clutches the man’s shirt.
“More?” is fanned against his mouth, and Jon nods.
It takes several repeats before the empty glass is set on the nightstand. Jon accepts whether or not they've kissed before is inconsequential because by the end he’s intimately familiar with how cleverly the man can tease a promise of more, though he doesn’t overstep. If anything it’s Jon that pulls him closer, ignoring the soreness of his cracked lips. A need burns in him that can’t be doused, not only for water but for company.
He thinks he’s been alone for longer than anyone should be.
“Better?”
Jon swallows. His saliva glands are functioning again. “Y-...yes.”
God, is that what he sounds like? An oxidized wreck sitting in lightless depths?
“Excellent. Let me fetch a pitcher. You’re in quite a state.”
Don’t leave me. Jon’s hands curl into the sheets. “O—of course I am. I’m starkers.”
That earns him a huffed laugh. “Not entirely.”
The man exits and the solitude pushes at Jon, climbs his bulwarks like waves slamming against a seawall. He refuses to acknowledge it and instead checks—the man wasn't lying. He isn’t naked. Tracksuit bottoms as soft as the covers themselves hang low on his hip bones, preserving a modicum of modesty. They’re not his. He might not know much other than his name but the fit is wrong. Too loose at the waistband, legs too long, material bunching around his ankles.
Which begs the question, what happened to what he’d been wearing before—
Before…? The thought slithers into the throat of the fog. Another epiphany darting by too fast to be caught. That’s becoming an annoying pattern.
Jon’s debating getting on his feet when the man returns. As promised, he's carrying a pitcher of water. Jon doesn’t hesitate to sit up, bolstered and eager to drown in that sweet, clean taste.
“Easy,” he’s warned, and Jon resentfully paces himself.
The mattress dips under new weight. Jon studies the man wordlessly. What is their connection? What is this tension vibrating between them? Are they lovers?
He’s given a hooded, almost regretful half-smile along with a glass of water. “We never got that far.”
He recognizes that smile. It used to nourish something in him, pushing the blood close to the skin in a pleased flush.
Jon stills. “Elias.” The name settles in the underpinnings that construct his understanding of the world, and he’s dizzied by the weight of the intense emotion that accompanies it, enigmatic in nature. Is it fear? Longing? Anger?
Elias sighs. His voice is layered with veiled meaning, a river flowing over a bed of stones. “You remembered my name. I’m honored.”
“You brought me here.” This room with its elegant wainscoting and carpeted floor. “Did you… save me?”
“No. You left a wide swath of burnt bridges in your wake. Including the ones I could have conceivably used to reach you. I had to trust that you’d somehow escape on your own. Which you did.” Elias pauses. “Do you recall where you’ve been for the past year?”
Jon’s awareness of time remains fuzzy but that’s a significant period to be anywhere, isn’t it? His grip on the glass threatens to crush the crystal. The answer lies in the belly of the beast, ringing with the echo of silence. He doesn’t want to revisit that place. To dig with bare hands into the sand, (the sand is chilled because the sun doesn’t pierce through the fog. It rises in the sky but there’s only ever a lusterless dusk, ribbons of light swirling through the ever-changing landscape.) searching for an exit.
“Jon.”
The glass is taken from him. He doesn’t notice, scrutinizing his hands for sand jammed in the nail beds. ( Don’t listen to the waves, don’t listen to the emptiness. Don’t become hollow. If you lose hope, all of it was for nothing.)
There are no grains under his nails. Not anymore.
Elias speaks. What he tells Jon doesn’t jolt any synapses but he listens attentively, frowning. “Ms. Tonner has been dead for some months. I admit that it takes an impressive show of will to kill someone you care for even when it was requested.” Elias’s hands cover his own. They’re warm, and Jon twines their fingers together impulsively, contrasting the differences between them. Polished, round nails next to his ragged ones. There’s a scar bisecting Jon’s hand. One of many.
“Regrettably the Metro doesn’t differentiate well between human and beast and Ms. Hussain was charged with murder. My own charges were dropped after a few calls. Handling the paperwork was interesting. Not an experience I’ll repeat but what is life for if not to savor the twists and turns it takes?”
Jon feels unqualified to reply. Were he himself, he imagines that he’d be tumbling through a gamut of emotions. These revelations seem important. They should stir some other reaction than a burble of apathy. He shakes his head, vaguely apologetic.
“I see,” Elias says steadily. Jon wouldn’t describe his eyes as kind. They’re too sharp for that. But he doesn’t appear vexed at Jon’s disinterest. “Do you remember Martin?”
Like a shipwrecked sailor lost at sea, Jon’s breath stutters, struggling to find its steady course.
No. He doesn’t, and more to the point, he doesn’t want to. Because he—failed? Distress pools in his chest and he’s not getting enough oxygen, dry drowning. (—The impression of footsteps at the edge of wet, darkened sand, his voice box rusted, pleas falling on deaf ears. Waves wash the footsteps out, leaving behind a tabula rasa. Two men once stood on the beach. Now there’s only one.)
Elias makes a soothing noise. “Your memories will return, Jon. As unpleasant as they may be, you need them, as do I.”
“Why?” Power throbs through the grief of the question, matching the ache written in his bones. Elias makes an odd head gesture, Adam's apple bobbing. He squeezes Jon’s hands, stroking a thumb across that slash of scar tissue, pad fitting into the depression.
“Because you are my Archivist, and we must finish what we began,” Elias says.
He’s telling the truth. Jon has the feeling that’s rare.
And that maybe he’ll come to regret leaving that cold, lonely beach.